91st General Meeting Speaker Presentation
"Introduction to the NB-380-1 Workbook"
Tom Clark and Vincent Scarcella
The following presentation was delivered at the 91st General Meeting Monday General Session on May 15, 2023. It has been edited for content and phrasing.
INTRODUCTION: Tom Clark has worked for the Oregon Building Codes Division for 8 years – half of that as the chief inspector. Prior to state service, he worked in the data center industry as a critical facilities technician. Mr. Clark also served in the US Navy as a nuclear engineering laboratory technician onboard the USS Enterprise. He is involved in the following National Board committees: NBIC Part 1 Subgroup and Subcommittee, the Committee on Qualifications for Inspection, and he serves as the chair for the Board of Trustees NB-380 Workbook Task Group.
Vincent Scarcella is director for the Eastern Territory at CNA supporting field services in 23 states. He has worked for CNA for over 20 years and supports the technology and life science segments and vendor management. Mr. Scarcella has more than 30 years of risk management experience that includes underwriting and claims investigation and contractor management. He served in the US Navy as a propulsion engineer, control systems technician, laboratory technician and a firefighter. Mr. Scarcella serves on the Committee on Qualifications for Inspection and is the vice chair for the NB-380 Workbook Task Group.
Their slide presentation can be found here.
MR. SCARCELLA: We want to start by thanking Wendy (White, National Board director of communications) and Brian (Shafer, NBBI digital content specialist). Unbelievable. I mean, we started the presentation process back in October. And you guys are fantastic in helping us get all the way to here. And also, the staff at CNA, Teresa (Litoborski, administrative assistant) and Barb (Klinkman, business process consultant), you can let them know I mentioned this, John (Spizuoco, vice president risk control), what a great job they did with the presentation.
MR. CLARK: I also want to thank Rob (Troutt, chair) and the Board of Trustees for so much support in getting this project off the ground. It's just been tremendous to see a positive reception and getting all the resources and insight that we need, so thank you.
MR. SCARCELLA: Absolutely.
MR. CLARK: So, we're going to talk about a couple different things today. What we're going to start off with is what is NB-380? It's just a jumble of letters and numbers, but we're going to talk about what that document is and what it gives us the authority to do. Then we're going to get into a discussion on why a workbook. Why do we need a workbook to implement the requirements of NB-380? Then we're going to get into some details on the workbook itself, how it's laid out, what the components are. And then we're going to very briefly talk about our vision for the future. We're going to keep it short, and then we'll have a quick chat with you guys about how we can get feedback from you, which is probably the most valuable part of this whole presentation.
What is NB-380? Well, you can read. It says it's the National Board Inservice Inspector Training Program. It is a document that defines requirements for a training program for Inservice Inspectors who don't meet the traditional experience and education requirements for a National Board Inservice Inspector Commission. It takes a lot of different ingredients and brings it altogether. It has on-the-job style inspection training. This is ride-along type training with inspector candidates in the field with commissioned inspectors. It has classroom training both within the jurisdiction or within the AIA's training program and with the National Board. It also requires 300 inspections. These will be supervised inspections that are signed off by the actual commission inspector, not the candidate, but we give them a chance to see what doing the job in the field is really like. And as we said earlier, it's designed for inspector candidates who are not otherwise eligible for a commission.
MR. SCARCELLA: It's a blended learning system that really takes advantage of all the learning methods that people could use. You might look at this, and if you filled out an application, you might recognize these. It's the education and the experience tables that are RCI-1. And we go through these in committee, and we've looked at them. They've stayed pretty solid as the years have gone on. And if you know you have to have those five credits, those are things that we're looking for candidates and, right, the golden five. Guess what, that golden five is not for everybody – not everybody can be a BT, right? So, we have to think outside the box, and that's where we are – the 380 program.
MR. CLARK: I want to point out that the 380 program allows for someone with zero points, but it doesn't have to be used for someone with zero points, because RCI-1 requires one point in experience and one point in education, and then the other three can come from either category. Let's say you have someone who has four points in experience, but just doesn't have education. There are various options out there to get those education points, and the NB-380 program would be one of those options. Same thing if they have the education but not the experience. This program can be applied to a wide variety of candidates. Vinny, do you want to tell us a little bit about RCI.1.1.3 and how it allows this program to be used?
MR. SCARCELLA: Do you want a great job right now because this is the process that really didn't happen overnight? We were very comfortable with 800 hours. And in committee, we were concerned about changing it, because we didn't want to dilute the knowledge base, right? But we wanted to have – am I taking any of your …
MR. JOHN BURPEE (chief inspector, Maine; first vice chair of Board of Trustees): You're always stealing my thunder.
MR. SCARCELLA: I'm sorry. I'll let John explain it because he was there for the whole thing.
MR. BURPEE: That's OK. We wanted to get to why we're having a workbook eventually. It was not easy, but I don't want to take away from these guys. I reported to you guys in the past about the NB-380 program and the various things we were doing. And if I had three hours, I'd bore you again, but I have two minutes. The past two, three years we've had various Committee on Qualifications for Inspection working groups, various BOT task groups. And it became apparent that our system of tracking wasn't very good. So, we ended up with the NB-380 program migrating to a task-based system as opposed to an hours-based system. With the expectation that a workbook would be created for somebody to follow. The goal was to have an off-the-shelf product that an employer could take and give to their inspector, and if they followed it, they're going to meet the requirements of RCI-1 by completing the NB-380. So, we formed another task group – these guys. And it's the outstanding work that they're doing that you're seeing here today. And the current form, I think, is in use in some jurisdictions, but I think we're going to have some future enhancements and I'm going to give it back to you guys.
MR. SCARCELLA: We've already started using it. Actually, on the fly we started using it. We used it for candidates just last year.
MR. CLARK: So as John started to touch on, why a workbook? There's a lot of different reasons. One is that we got feedback from membership, from the inspection agencies, and from NB-380 candidates saying that they needed help. They needed guidance. This was a tool that's made available to them, but they didn't really feel like they had the tools they needed to use the tool. We also looked at the process and felt like it could provide some really clear benefits. One way to do that is by helping the candidates understand what it is they need to learn, not just have a list of all I need to do. And they can look ahead and see what's coming up. They can see what it's building to. The other thing is, and probably in my mind one of the most important parts, is that it helps the trainer to make sure that they've got everything. There's so much to talk about; there's so much to study and learn. And a solid workbook is a checklist to make sure we got everything done and we talked about it and that we reviewed it. It also makes it easier to simplify the documentation of performing your training for your new inspector candidates because you've got a whole workbook that lists everything you taught them and when you taught it to them. And it's particularly helpful in jurisdictions or smaller AIAs who do not have as firmly established a training program as some of our other industry partners do, because this workbook is kind of doing a lot of legwork for them.
MR. SCARCELLA: (New Hampshire) Chief Brian Oliver ended up giving us a lot of feedback about him trying to pull this off by himself. And his part of it was the feedback he gave us on how we would want to structure, and I believe he joined the group, but we'll go into that in a couple minutes.
MR. CLARK: Let's start talking about the workbook itself. I'll start with giving you an overview of how everything came together. So as Rob mentioned, the task group was appointed by the Board of Trustees in November of 2021. Due to the holidays and other constraints, we didn't have our first meeting until January of 2022. That really kicked everything off in full swing. We had virtual monthly meetings with the group that you see on the screen. And I'd like to recognize them if they could all stand up, hold their hand up, whatever they feel comfortable with. Going down the list as it's printed, Mike Burns was our first secretary, very helpful. There was (Nova Scotia) Chief Don Ehler. (City of Seattle) Chief Steve Frazier, who I believe could not make it today. We had a staff resource, Greg Goossens, who's been very helpful in this process. Brian Oliver, as we mentioned, came to us with real-world experience in how this program works and it has been absolutely invaluable. Then there's this guy named Vinny, he's all right. No, Vinny, you've been tremendous.
MR. SCARCELLA: I was just about to give you a bunch of compliments.
MR. CLARK: And then, of course, we have Del Schirmer with XL (Insurance). There's Del in the back. We can just briefly go to the next slide. All those guys came together, and in an amazing turn of events, we put together the first version of the workbook by November of last year. So, in less than one year, we had a finished version one of the product. A tremendous effort, and thank you guys very, very much for all your work. That got published on the National Board website in December. And then, Vinny, would you like to introduce our new members and explain why we have them.
MR. SCARCELLA: Steve, great work so far, especially those spreadsheets that transfer to E-learning in the future. I think Tommy (Granneman, Oklahoma chief) is not here but thank you. Rich (Kuziak, Hartford Steam Boiler), I know you're here. Thank you for joining up. Craig (Bierl, Chubb), of course. Now the upgrade from Mike Burns to Milton Washington.
MR. BURNS: I can hear you.
MR. SCARCELLA: This takes a lot of time. And I really appreciate everybody doing this work and I appreciate – I have staff here. Tim (Bolden) and Bill (Renny), I couldn't even get this done without you. John (Spizuoco), without your support and, you know, there's no way to get this done. It takes a lot of time. I really appreciate all the employers and everybody allowing us to do this.
MR. CLARK: Let's get into what the workbook really is. It’s a tasked-based training program. For those of you who had the privilege to serve in the US Navy, this workbook would look very familiar to you. It looks like a call card. It's designed with knowledge checks to make sure the inspector candidate is absorbing knowledge that goes with what they're studying. It has practical applications where they can take that knowledge that they've learned and apply it in the field to real-world situations. And then we have module reviews where the chief inspector or the Inservice Inspector supervisor will be reviewing the module content with the inspector candidate to make sure they're retaining all of it. Then we have an inspection log, which documents those required 300 inspections and allows both the candidate and the supervisor to keep track of their progress. So, it's modular. What does modular mean to you?
MR. SCARCELLA: It's great because it allows flexibility. We broke out all the information that was related into separate sections. Suppose you get somebody that's really strong in one of those areas, you can break it out. They've got two points, right? But they can finish up on those two points quick because we broke it into sections.
MR. CLARK: You can see here what the actual modules are. The way we designed this is that all the content is grouped together based on topics starting with the fundamentals, heat transfer, fluid flow, different types of boiler designs, basic physics, all kinds of fundamentals that we can't assume the candidates with no points or low points actually have knowledge of. Then we roll into code reference overview and safety requirements. We basically start following the ASME code and working with power boilers, power piping, low pressure in heating, pressure vessels and pressure relief devices. The beauty of the way this is set up is that just because we laid it out in this order doesn't mean you have to do it in that order. If an inspection agency wants to prioritize safety, which is a great idea, they can start with module three, or if we get enough feedback saying that should be module one, we'll move it up to module one. It just allows content to be absorbed in ways that are appropriate to the candidate. It lets you fine tune it for their needs and their level of experience.
MR. SCARCELLA: This follows NB-331and 334, so that's the Body of Knowledge for (Inservice) Inspectors and that Body of Knowledge for the exam. We had to take three different code books and try to get everything captured in it. There will be changes later on because I gave Milton a request to review some of those so we can compare it to the knowledge that we have in this document.
MR. CLARK: Here's some examples of actual screen shots from the workbook showing you what the content looks like. On the left, you have some knowledge checks coming from heating boilers. You can see this one happens to be for jurisdictional requirements. What exactly the candidate is being asked when their knowledge is checked here will be different based on each jurisdiction, but they can ask questions about permitting – you can see licensing, exemptions, what types of construction standards, how to do variances for these types of things. And then it should be initialed by the commission that performs that knowledge check with the candidate and then date it. That way they can keep track of the progress and when things were completed.
On the right side, you have pressure vessel, practical applications, so this is actually going out into the field and putting code knowledge to use. One example there is inspect a compressed air vessel. This should also tie into the inspection log. Let's say Vinny initials that I, as the inspector candidate, inspected a pressure vessel on March 31st. Well, we should be able to go to the inspection log and see that we visited a site on March 31st that had this pressure vessel. Some of these have to be fine-tuned based on jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions don't require pressure vessel inspection, but we feel like our commission is permissive. Once you get that commission, just because your jurisdiction only does boilers doesn't mean that you're limited to boilers. You have the authority to inspect pressure vessels as well, so we need to train to it. One of the requirements in the workbook specifically says that if you can’t meet one of these requirements, you need to document some sort of acceptable substitute for doing that. So in the case of, say, inspecting a CO2 vessel, say your jurisdiction doesn't normally see CO2 vessels, well, then you can do some classroom training on CO2 vessels and how they work and what the inspections are going to be like and what the code covers, because we have supplements in two different NBIC books talking about liquid carbon dioxide vessels, so there's ample opportunities for training to make up for areas where practical applications just can't be implemented.
MR. SCARCELLA: It really makes it easy for National Board staff to verify they have the proper training to get those five credits. That was one of the goals, too.
MR. CLARK: This is just a quick peek at the inspection log that we talked about earlier. This will be how you document your 300 inspections. You look through some examples using myself as the candidate, so you can see on 4/17/2002, I inspected a power boiler with Kevin Perdue. And it documents the commission number of Kevin, what the result of the inspection was and gives a place for comments. Say they noted some interesting conditions that we wanted to re-address in the future inspection or say we had the opportunity to discuss an unusual circumstance. That can be documented there. You can see in some of the other ones we inspected an air receiver, myself and Russ Tomka, we found that the air was full of water, so definitely a violation there and something that needed to be addressed. We have some high hopes for future inspection logs. Let's talk about the vision for the future. Again, we're going to keep this short, because we're not promoting a product that we're selling for millions of dollars. This workbook is free for anyone to use. We have some great ideas about what we’d like to do with the task group. We'd like to look into a digital format, potentially an app or a web-based application. There's a lot of different ways we can go with that. We're looking at the inclusion of digital content, which is images, videos, tutorials, maybe 3D models. I mean, there's a lot of cool things we can do with this in the future.
MR. SCARCELLA: Very early on, we were thinking about how this all becomes e-learning. You can't give somebody who is 24 years old a workbook. They look at you funny, right? They've got everything on a piece of toast. So, we've had that right up in the forefront in the thinking of the whole design, but there's other changes coming, too. And, Tom, you were in the room when BOT was talking about this. Do you want to talk about that, or do you want to go right to your website?
MR. CLARK: No, that's one of the things I do want to say here. We do, as I mentioned earlier, have tremendous support from the Board of Trustees. And we have a timeline for building toward this dream goal of a digital application or a web-based content, whatever that may be, but in the meantime, we still have a lot of work that we can do. And we're focusing right now on creating content revisions not only to make a better product, but to keep the product consistent with code updates and code changes. Something I'm really excited about is that we are working on supplements. Don Ehler is working on the first prototype supplement. The way that would work is Don has a lot of additional requirements in his jurisdiction that are not consistent across the United States. And he would like a way to train inspectors on that and incorporate it into NB-380. We will work with him to build a supplement that will be the same style, the same format, but will cover his code applications. And we're hoping that works out well, and maybe that's something we can work with other jurisdictions in the future to build these out as training tools for their jurisdiction specific to their jurisdictional requirements that could be used by the jurisdiction or by the AIAs working in these jurisdictions. So, we're very excited about that.
There's a line on there about potential integrations within the NBBI system. I have no idea what systems you guys would want integrations with. Certainly not the ones being talked about later today so we're going to skip right past that. And Vinny, I have an idea. You see, we got the slide show on No. 1 four weeks ago? And something kind of cool happened between now and then. So, what I would like to do, if National Board staff can give us a hand here, is to pull up a new web page. When you have a product like this, what you want to do is be able to communicate it to the people who need to know about it. And the people who need to know about it are people who are outside the normal training process, outside the normal experience process. And to do that, we can't just say, oh, you should look into NB-380, because that doesn't mean anything to anyone who doesn't already know what it is. So, what we've done is create a web page on the National Board website that goes over what NB-380 itself is, what the workbook is, what it's based on, where the requirements come from. It has links to all the related documents, all that stuff. And the best part is that the URL to this web page is not some convoluted series of numbers. You don't have to dig through multiple links on the website. You can go to nbbi.org/nb380. So, if you want to tell somebody about this program who isn't familiar with what it is, that's all it is, a quick simple link to get to there. I want to thank National Board IT staff for getting this done. They did it in three days. Three days! That was from an email with a text you see on the screen from me to being live with a custom URL on their website. Just truly impressive. Thank you, Brian Shafer and others at National Board staff making this map – Milton Washington, Mike Burns, Lee Cochran, Jay Mayhorn. Thank you so much for your help with this. If we can flip back to the slideshow, please, we will wrap this up so that somebody else can get up here and we can get you out of here a little bit sooner.
Feedback is the last thing we want to talk about. Like we said, the workbook inspection log is available on the website nbbi.org/nb380. We are looking for input not from just the people who are using it, but the people who want to use it but can't because there was something in there that they need tweaked or there's something they don't agree with, or they need help. We want all the feedback we can get, positive and negative. We are willing to incorporate that as we work on version two and future versions of the workbook. Instead of taking time to answer questions and comments now, because we're running behind, what I'd like to do is have you address your questions either to myself, Vinny, Milt, or you may have noticed this little badge I'm wearing right here. It says, "Ask me about NB-380." We had these custom made for all the task group members and hopefully they're all wearing them today. And if you see anyone wearing these badges, I encourage you to stop them, talk to them, thank them, and then ask them whatever questions you may have or providing them with feedback. Otherwise, feel free to reach out to the rest of us with the emails you see on screen.
MR. SCARCELLA: Before Tom can get off the stage, I wanted to thank you for your leadership. It's been incredible.
MR. CLARK: Vinny, I said, is smart and handsome, not all that other gibberish. All right. We thank you all so much.
MR. SCARCELLA: Thank you very much, everybody.